How a B2B Lead Generation Strategy Will Help You Build Your Marketing Agency

If you own a marketing agency, you’re intimately familiar with the world of inbound lead generation. Your team can take an inkling of an idea and expand it into a cohesive, recognizable brand strategy for clients. Your website overhauls can resurrect pages buried in the fifth page of search results and bring them to the top slot. When it comes to your own company, you take the top marketing strategies and blend them into the perfect inbound lead generation mix.

However, even the most innovative marketing campaigns can fall flat without assistance from outbound lead generation. If leads don’t know about your brand and don’t realize what you can offer their company, they’re not going to stumble upon your website and see your marketing skills in action. And while glowing reviews from your current clients can get you sporadic referrals, word-of-mouth marketing isn’t a sustainable revenue generation method.

If you’re looking for predictable growth, you need a deliberate and organized outbound B2B lead generation program. Here are a few ways that outbound lead generation can help you build your marketing agency.

Filling your website with SEO features, informative blog posts, and compelling design elements is an excellent way to attract leads—but only if they’re already looking for you. Your potential customers aren’t going to Google “digital marketing agencies near me” if they don’t know why they need your services. Many business owners don’t know what a well-designed website or brand strategy could do for their business, and they won’t know until you get in touch and tell them.

With B2B appointment setting, you can compile a list of prospects that fit your target customer base and demonstrate the value your services provide. Some of these leads may not have a marketing strategy at all; others may have a marketing agency partner they’re perfectly happy with. Regardless of their current position, that first cold call can bring a lead into your sales pipeline and turn into a future partnership.

Think about it this way—if a business owner has used the same marketing agency for ages and doesn’t see any issues with their service, they’re not going to set out looking for a new company. If they’re not actively searching, it’s unlikely they’ll turn into an inbound lead for your business. However, if you get in touch with them, ask about their current provider, and show them that you can get them better results for a lower price, they might entertain a switch.

The most successful B2B appointment setting programs use a step-by-step approach and various lead generation tactics to get as many leads into the pipeline as possible. Some of these tactics include:

• Cold calls: You might associate cold calls with pushy sales reps and incessant, annoying voicemails, and you’re often not far off the mark. However, skilled sales development representatives (SDRs) can turn cold calls into welcome, two-sided conversations. These conversations are a great way (and sometimes the only way) to get your foot in the door and start a long-term relationship with a lead.
• Warm calls: Once you get introductions out of the way, your calls turn from cold to warm. During warm calls, you can learn more about your leads, determine their pain points, and share how your agency can solve their problems. Most importantly, you can set sales appointments with your potential customers and move them forward in the sales cycle.
• Emails: It’s easy to ignore a call from an unknown number, but an email with a clever subject line is hard to miss. Plus, if you weave details from past conversations into emails, you can show leads that you’re attentive and care about their business.
• Marketing collateral: Words can often come off as empty, especially when they come from a sales representative. Marketing collateral pieces, such as case studies and sell sheets, add proof to your claims and let your work do the talking.

If you rely solely on inbound marketing, you limit your reach to leads that already need your services. Adding B2B appointment setting to your sales plan allows you to expand your small pool of leads into an extensive revenue source.

In inbound lead generation, there is no “lead nurturing” stage. Potential customers enter your pipeline at the end of their buying journey when they know they need your services, which means you don’t have to spend weeks (or months) convincing them to set an appointment. It also means that you don’t get the chance to convert hesitant leads into customers, which severely limits your potential.

Nurturing a lead during the B2B appointment setting process can be a tedious months-long process. However, it gives you the opportunity to find prospects that would have never entered your inbound pipeline and guide them toward a sale. Even if your lead is months away from having the budget to become a marketing services partner, you can spend those months sending them curated information and keeping your company at the forefront of their potential partner list.

You’re not the only marketing agency in your area that your leads can choose from. In fact, marketing agencies around the nation can compete for your customers—your services aren’t limited by location. When it’s time for your lead to choose a provider, you want your name to be the first that comes to mind.

If you’ve had months to share information about your business, discuss your lead’s marketing needs, and send examples of your work, the chances are good that you’ll come out on top. If someone just found your website today after looking at several competitors’ sites, there’s no telling who they’ll contact. Lead nurturing gives you the top-of-mind awareness you need to close more deals.

When you use inbound marketing and referrals to generate leads, you can’t predict when your next project will come along. You might spend months without any interest from prospects, leaving you scrambling for your next income source. With outbound lead generation, you don’t have to worry about where your next client will come from—you have a steady stream of leads working their way through your pipeline at any given time.

Outbound pipelines don’t just generate consistent leads—they generate qualified leads as well. If you take the time to cleanse your lead list and nurture every potential customer in your sales cycle, you’ll end up setting appointments with your ideal leads. Instead of wasting hours meeting with leads that don’t fit your criteria, you can spend your time pitching to viable opportunities only.

Plus, your leads will already know the essential details about your agency and understand the services you offer. You won’t have to spend 30 minutes on introductions—you can dive straight into the substance of your presentation and make the most of your time.

You didn’t throw together your logo, website, and social media profiles in a few hours. It took months of deliberation to perfect the tiniest details like your preferred font, the exact shade of your company color, and the best way to phrase your slogan. That work paid off—the final products are a testament to your exceptional work. Don’t you want as many people as possible to see the work you and your employees are so proud of?

Your outbound leads don’t miss out on your inbound content just because they didn’t find your agency organically. When potential customers first learn about your company after a cold call or email, they do what’s second nature for most consumers: internet research. They search for your website, your LinkedIn profile, and any client reviews listed on Google. If they like what they see, they might add you as a social media connection or reach out to schedule a meeting.

During the lead nurturing process, your sales team can also use your marketing content to convey value to potential customers. If a prospect asks if you’ve ever successfully managed a brand strategy for a company similar to theirs, you can direct them to the testimonials or case studies page on your website. You can also send over blog posts that might be relevant to your leads and position yourself as a trustworthy partner.

The best B2B lead generation strategies use their inbound marketing program to uplift their outbound marketing efforts and vice versa. Without one, the other won’t be as successful. Adding B2B appointment setting to your internal marketing strategy can give your sales the boost you need.

As a marketing agency, you probably don’t need any help perfecting your internal inbound lead generation strategy. However, sales is a different beast that requires a separate skill set to master. You may have the most user-friendly, visually compelling website and a social media presence that rivals the most recognizable brands, but you’re missing a key growth component without sales. With your marketing skills and Abstrakt’s proven sales process, you can surpass your growth goals and become the top agency in your area.

Abstrakt has been helping businesses throughout the country grow for over a decade using our strategic four-step B2B appointment setting process. While you focus on serving your clients, we can build an outbound pipeline that produces results for years to come.

Reach out to learn more about our B2B lead generation services for marketing agencies.